pete_l

When cleaning an eyepiece, apply whatever liquid your choose to a cloth, not to the optical surface. That limits the quantity that could reach the lens. If you are concerned about "pooling" and stuff seeping into the EP body, hold the lens upside down and apply the damp cloth from below. That way any excess would drip downwards, away from the EP rather than inside it. Then dry the surface, after cleaning. But as with the cleaning, don''t apply sideways pressure against the glass (dab, don't rub). Personally I have never noticed any difference at all with different types of fluid. None of them damage the surfaces. None of them are more or less effective at removing dirt or grease. None leave a residue if the EP is dried properly after cleaning. My favoured liquid is tap water with a tiny amount of washing up liquid and possibly a drop of vinegar. Just like for windshields.

Not so much panic buying, but it seems that over the past 20 (cough) years every telescope includes a 26mm plossl. I now have more of them than toilet rolls.

Two points/ First, you can always alter your arc-sec per pixel value by adding a focal reducer. That will give you the benefit of the larger aperture. Second, you say the setup is too unwieldy for one person to manage. That would seem to shut down any further discussions about using it.

That's my experience too. The magnification of the bins magnifies the shake to the same extent. I have a pair of Nikon 14x40 image stabilised that are excellent for hand-held use, even though they are heavier than traditional binoculars. At the other end of the scale my Orion 2 x 54 are fantastic for constellation-level viewing. They are not so much binoculars as a way of taking 20 years off my eyesight. They have a small magnification factor (x2). But their main benefit is they "give back" about a magnitude of ocular sensitivity. Though I can't say how effective they would be where light pollution is what limits seeing faint objects and stars.

Simples! Get some scope / finder rings of a suitable size. Attach them to parts of the assemble that do not move (i.e. aren't part of the focussing or aperture mechanism) preferably as far apart as possible. Then change the position of the rings so that they will fit through the holes of a dovetail bar. The dovetail will attach to your mount.

I would advise against locating it somewhere that cannot easily be reached. If for no other reason than birds perching on/near it could require regular cleaning of the dome 😆 Whereever it ends up, my suggestion for a "tidy" solution would be a single board computer and Powe over Ethernet. Just one cable required. No need for flaky "PI" wifi. And no long USB cable runs, either.

Both my Canon 20Ds use CF cards. One of them is about 15 years old and still plods on. It seems to me that the connections to CF cards are more robust than those to SD cards. There is positive mating (which as others have said can occasionally lead to a bent pin, though I've never experienced that) but with an SD card it is only a spring loaded connection with the SD card having exposed contacts.

I reckon that AstroPhysics and maybe a few others do this deliberately to support the cachet of their brand. By keeping supply low they increase the rarity and demand (and therefore price) of their products. It used to be that if you wanted a Harley (not a make of telescope), you would have to wait months for it. It only works where a product is considered a luxury item. I doubt that the practice would transfer to the mass market where competition is rife. It also does nothing to promote product improvement.

Going from a 6 inch aperture to 8 inches will reduce the Dawes limit (i.e. increase the resolving power). At least, in theory! The value changes from 0.77 arc-sec to 0.58. Both of those will be smaller than the resolving power limit imposed by atmospheric seeing.

There's no reason not to use a single power supply. Though I have to say I'm not keen on fans in outdoor equipment. You never know what they will suck in to the equipment . In addition, they seem to me to be the weakest link - often cheap units that cannot withstand long periods of use before becoming noisy (poor quality bearings, or ones that fill up with dust) and unreliable. Plus with a unit like this, it's meant to be incorporated into a "finger proof" cover, so you have to plan for airflow when designing your enclosure. When the fans do fail then your heat dissipation stops too. I prefer passive cooling. It needs larger heatsinks and external ventilation, but fewer moving parts are always a good thing. Especially when you have a potentially damp environment or a shed that is home to creepy-crawlies or larger "guests".

Locations never have one, fixed, SQM value. They change with all sorts of factors. Mine varies by over 0.5 magnitudes, depending on transparency (i.e. how much light is reflected compared with how much passes through and out of the atmosphere), sunspot cycle and probably lots of other things apart from the Moon. So I wouldn't get too tied up with what other websites say it should be. I suspect that all they do is look at the population of towns and villages and make a guess based on nothing more than their distance away. What is interesting from your all-sky image is that the brightest LP to the south isn't as bad as the effect the dimmer LP from the east has.

I think you would need a very large refractor to see colour - or possibly a good imagination, which is defintiely cheaper People's tolerance of imperfections varies a great deal. Just like some people would never dream of drinking a wine that cost less than £100, or listening to music in MP3 format. So some will call CA "unacceptable" when others are quite relaxed about it. Personally, I do not find it all that objectionable on the few objects where it is noticeable. But then, I have no problems with cheap wine, either! I would say there is no hard and fast rule. Some achro's are better than others. Some Apo's are really not very good.

Briefly, the OP has an 8 inch Dob. They bought a Baader Hyperion mk IV zoom and a matching Barlow. They like it.

I own a Primaluce Labs C82 pier. This comes with a detachable adapter plate. While the range of mounts they stock adapters for is fairly small, the plate itself is not that complicated and the company supplies drawings that a local metalworking shop could customise for whatever mount the user needs. And at €500 for the whole shebang, I reckon it's a pretty good buy. Though shipping one a few thousand miles from Italy might jack up the cost a tad, better look for a local dealer.

My personal experience is that the HEQ5 Pro is boringly good. Simply put, it does what it should. Without fuss or drama. Just stay within its weight limit and stick to short-ish OTAs and it delivers. I've had one for 7 years and it has given no problems or cause for concern.

The last "toy" I got was a large refractor. It came in a shipping carton with dimensions 1.3m x 0.35 x 0.30 metres. That is a cubic capacity of 0.1365m³ A 40 foot container will hold about 55m³ of stuff, or about 400 boxes the same size as what I was sent. So the cost of the space in a container for my refractor will have risen from £2000 / 400 = £5, to £16,000 / 400 = £40. An increase of £35. I just checked what I paid in December. Since then the price has risen by €45, so an amount that is commensurate with Tim's experience. If other retail prices go up by significantly more than that amount, there must be something else going on than just container costs. Something UK specific?

Many, many years ago an astronomer whose word I have no reason to dismiss told me that if you can make out the colour of the light from your torch, it's too bright to not affect your night vision.

A fuse is not a universal protection. For example it won't stop your gear being damaged if the polarity is wrong (positive and negative swapped over). At best, it will prevent a fire from starting. Although that is a good thing to stop!

My first reaction is that this is nothing more than an upselling ploy. To the best of my knowledge there are no telescopes or types of telescope that are designed specifically for light polluted areas. Nor are there any telescopes that are marketed as "best for" that. However, there are types of light pollution filters available as add-ons for practically any sort, size or price of telescope - so the problem is acknowledged. Just not with special models of equipment. On the subject of light pollution filters, these do cut out certain types of LP. Mainly that which comes from streetlights that have narrow bands of colour. One issue is that they also block out some of the wanted light which leads to the conclusion that a telescope which gathers more light would couteract that filtering. Making a 10-inch Dob a better bet than an 8-inch. It is also said that a longer focal length has the effect of darkening the sky surrounding star clusters, as they have a narrower field of view (while stars remain pinpoints). This making them stand out from the background.

Or even a few €€€€s cheaper from other vendors 😉

You can use eyepiece projection to get a larger apparent focal length beyond what prime focus photography will give you. If you are using an unmodified DSLR, it probably has a moire filter in front of the sensor. This acts to blur images thus reducing the resolution of the camera below what you would expect from doing the maths on pixel size / focal length. However, you ultimately run up against the effects of the atmosphere and then against diffraction of the light coming in. You might get some further improvement by imaging in the infra red, although that will worsen the diffraction effects.

Be aware that the chinese new year is on Feb 12. Expect a delay of up to a week in processing orders taken around that time.

One thing you might want to consider is a way of powering your DSLR apart from the internal battery. I found that when doing long exposures with my 1100D that the battery went flat after a few hours.

There are many examples on Astobin of excellent images taken with a C8 on an AVX or EQ5 mount at the fuill 2 metre focal length.

So send it back. If it makes the charger overheat it is faulty. What did the reviews of that particular item have to say?